If you want to refresh your marketing strategy, you’re likely thinking about using new content formats. Changing your creative can be a great way to shake things up without changing your long-term goals, brand position, or other core elements of your strategy.

Among these new content formats, video seems to be a solution that is gaining steam in the past few years.

Apart from the standard commercials we’re used to seeing, today’s brands use innovative video formats like animation, documentaries, and customer testimonials to connect with their customers on a deeper level and tell their story.

But, how can you finally kickstart your own video marketing campaign? Here's a handy guide to get you started!

Why use video marketing?

First, let’s answer an important question: why are brands investing in video content?

For starters, their customers seem to prefer it both when it comes to content consumption and making purchasing decisions. This Think with Google report tells us that more than half of consumers claim that watching a video online helped them decide on which product to buy.

And, when people want something, smart marketers are quick to deliver. According to HubSpot, video has become the most popular format to use in content marketing, surpassing infographics and blogs.

So, it seems that trends both from the consumer and brand side point to the fact that video is becoming more prominent in the marketing world.

Here is how you can jump on this train and start doing video marketing for business purposes.

1. Start with your goals: create a marketing funnel

Like all good marketing strategies, a video marketing strategy should start with your goals. A good way to think about your goals is to create a marketing funnel and have a specific goal for each stage of the funnel.

Here is what we mean.

• Awareness. In this stage, your prospect is aware that they have a problem. Your key goal here should be to show them that you have a solution to that problem. You can do this with branding videos whose purpose is to bring in a new audience. For example, if you were a travel agency, your goal in the Awareness stage is to reach people who are generally interested in traveling.
  

• Consideration. Continuing from our travel agency example, a user in the Consideration phase would be someone actively searching for travel agencies. They think to themselves “I want to go somewhere this summer” and they start researching options. At this point, you want to reach them with a video that showcases your best offers and USPs.
  

• Decision. The user has now almost completely narrowed down their list of options. In this stage, you want to reach them with powerful content like video testimonials from satisfied customers or personalized videos.

Source: HubSpot

In some cases, you’ll see Loyalty brought up as the final stage of the funnel. This is the point where the user has already purchased your product but you want to express your gratitude and transform them into loyal advocates for your brand.

You can do this with video as well – a personal video message or a brief onboarding video that points them to the most important resources they’ll need.

2. Get to know your audience

Once you’ve set up your funnel, it’s time to start thinking about your audience.

Who are your users and what kind of content do they want to see? For our travel agency, that will almost certainly depend on the offer they’re promoting. A summer trip to Ibiza will likely target a younger audience than a relaxing spa weekend in a business complex.

Here are some other things to think about when segmenting your audience.

First, you can analyze your visitors to learn more about who they are. Analyze your website and social media to see the demographics that are interested in your services. This part is fairly easy – all you need to do is access your Facebook and Instagram insights and you’ll see all the data is right there.

Source: HootSuite

The same goes for your website – you can find all of this information in Google Analytics.

Second, you can see which types of users are interested in which parts of your offer. You can use heat mapping tools to see how your users behave when they get to your website.

Why does all of this matter?

When you have this information, you can use it to create audience segments or even audience personas. For example, our tourist agency could have a group of users called “Young thrill-seekers” and another group called “senior nature-lovers”. These two groups would then receive videos with different content, atmosphere, message, and production.

Add 2-5 groups to this equation and you have a whole promotional video production dedicated to giving everyone the tailored content they’re looking for.

3. Types of videos to create

The kinds of videos you’ll want to create will depend on your product, audience, and stage in the funnel.

Here are some types of videos to consider.

Product video

These videos are the closest to traditional TV commercials. They’re focused on the product – the way it looks, feels and interacts. A product video is usually accompanied by a voiceover and/or titles that describe the product’s features in more detail.

Here is a typical example of a product commercial done in a modern way:

Apple takes a standard approach of showing a product in use. In this case, they focus on one of its most significant features: water-resistance. The voice-over talks about the product, we see it in action, and, in the end, we see how it looks and behaves in a wet environment.

A product video is perfect for the Consideration stage when the users are actively researching options.

Tutorial/Demo video

If this isn’t enough and you want to explain your product further, you might want to consider a demo or a tutorial.

Tutorial videos can be just what your prospects need to see in the Purchase stage when they’re deeply interested in your product. At that point, you can show them exactly how your product looks and display multiple use cases.

You can also use them in the Awareness stage to showcase the product to those users who aren’t familiar with it.

That’s what Airtable does in this video:

In just under a minute, they guide you through all the possibilities and all the tasks you can execute with their platform.

Customer testimonials

In the Decision stage, your users might need just a little push to make their purchase. That push can often come in the form of social proof – when a prospect sees that your product has already solved the exact problem they have for other people, they might make their decision.

Customer testimonials can be a powerful tool if you use them right. That means you have to let your customers do all the talking and focus on capturing real human stories.

Here is how HubSpot mixed product shots with the owners’ story about how HubSpot helped them achieve results.

Onboarding video

When your customers make their first purchase, you may want to greet them with an onboarding video.

This video allows you to welcome new customers, thank them for their purchase, and give them a few pointers on how to get started with your product. An onboarding video can be particularly useful if you’re selling a product that takes some time to get a handle on, which can be the case for most software solutions.

In our experience, sending an onboarding/welcoming video can have profound effects on your business – like increasing your return traffic by 32%.

4. The three stages of marketing video production

Now, for the practical part – how do you go about creating all these videos?

This will depend on whether it’s a TV, website, or a social media video production but, generally, there are three stages of video production.

Source: storytellermn

First, we have the pre-production stage. In this stage, you need to clearly define everything before you can start shooting. It sets up the whole production process from the script, potential outsourcing, budget, actors, scenery, etc.

The pre-production process can be so complex that it would be futile if we were to go into detail about it here. For now, let's just highlight the three most important things you need to cover: the script, the budget, and whether to do it in-house or outsource. Those three factors will have a huge impact on your end product.

Next, there is the production stage. Here, we’re talking about creating the actual video. Depending on the type of video you’re making, you’ll be working with a large film crew, a few videomakers, or there might be no filming at all (for animated videos). Your job is to make sure that the audio/visual quality and the overall look and feel of the video fit your brand perfectly.

Finally, we have the post-production stage. In this stage, you’ll be working with visual effects, sound effects, graphics, and everything else that’s artificially added to the video. For example, if you have a video of your CEO talking into the camera, the chyron with their name and title will be added to the post.

This whole process can get complicated and stressful, which is why a lot of companies invest in video marketing tools. They can allow you to create great digital videos with the talent you have in-house.

5. Promoting your videos

Once you're happy with your videos, it's time to start thinking about promoting them.

Source: Native Advertising

Virtually all marketing platforms support (or even prefer) video content. The first platform that will likely come to your mind is YouTube. It's perfect for video content, places no limit on video length, and allows you to promote your videos so that more people will see them.

While you certainly shouldn't neglect YouTube, you can benefit from sharing your videos on other social media platforms as well.

Both Facebook and Instagram love video content and the users of these platforms seem to prefer it over other formats. Just make sure to keep an eye on video length: Instagram doesn't allow videos longer than one minute. Facebook does but research suggests that shorter videos perform better – videos that are shorter than 15 seconds are the most likely to get complete views.

It's a similar story with LinkedIn. People spend up to three times more time-consuming videos than any other sponsored content.

6. Measuring your success

Finally, no digital marketing strategy is complete without metrics. To tell whether your video marketing strategy is working, here are some KPIs you should track.

• View count. This is a simple but very telling metric. It shows you how many people watched your video, which is a good indicator of its relevance. Essentially, this tells you the reach of your video. If you have a lot of views without investing too much, that could mean that people are sharing the video among themselves which is the ultimate goal!
  

• Watch time. This tells you how long people are watching your videos. To be safe, you’ll want to include brand elements at the beginning of the video: logo, claim, USP, etc. Since we already mentioned that people rarely watch videos until the end, you shouldn’t be discouraged if that’s the case with your videos. However, you should always strive to keep the videos engaging and get those watch times up.
  

• Clickthrough rate. Videos aren’t only about content consumption – you’ll want to see whether those videos are getting you some leads. This is why we always monitor conversion rates or the percentage of people who came to your website from the video and performed an action like making a purchase or scheduling an appointment.

Video marketing strategy: the final word

Video can be a powerful tool to improve your brand image, reach more people, and get commercial results.

All you need to do is approach your video marketing efforts strategically and choose the formats that fit your brand. Decide on the types of videos and production models that you’re most comfortable with and embark on your video journey!

If you don’t want to get involved in complicated production processes or if you’re looking for a more affordable option to create engaging videos, check out Bonjoro. We’ll help you make personalized video with no professional experience in just a few minutes.

Register for a free trial now!